The Bush crew has done it again (remember the plastic turkey on Thanksgiving?): (via Think Progress)
Earlier today, President Bush held an “impromptu” public teleconference with a group of U.S. soldiers based in Tikrit, Iraq.
Pentagon communications aide Allison Barber “insisted the questions were not rehearsed. The military had been told ahead of time only about topics the president might want to talk about, not specific questions. ‘We just knew broad themes,’ Barber said.”
Yet reporters could clearly hear White House handlers, including Barber herself, prepping the troops for President Bush’s photo-op:
WH Pooler Geoff Earle of the New York Post writes of the teleconference: “The soldiers, nine U.S. men and one U.S. woman, plus an Iraqi, had been tipped off in advance about the questions in the highly scripted event. Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for internal communication, could be heard asking one soldier before the start of the event, “Who are we going to give that [question] to?”
Read the rest here. Some of the audio in question here.
Update: It turns out the Turkey was real, just not for sharing with the soldiers. And the PR stunt was still pathetic.
Thanks to some jerk for the correction.